IFSI Library Lending Policies

If you have any questions about these policies, please contact us. We welcome any and all inquiries!

Local Lending

Standard loan period is 4 weeks.

Extensions are considered upon request.

Requested materials can be picked up in person at IFSI.

Lending is limited to Illinois residents.

Interlibrary Loan (ILL)

Standard loan period is 6 weeks.

IFSI Library materials can be delivered to a patron’s Illinois local library through ILL service.

A public library card is required.

ILL delivery to your public library may take up to 2 weeks.

Archives

Materials in the Illinois Fire Service Archives do not circulate, but patrons are welcome to use these resources in the IFSI Library.

Additional access restrictions may also apply.

Our Lady of the Angels School Fire: Introduction

Photo from the Chicago Tribune.

During the 1950s, the Our Lady of the Angels parish was one of the largest in the Chicago archdiocese. In addition to serving more than 4,500 families, the parish operated a school for more than 1,600 students, kindergarten through eighth-grade. On December 1, 1958, a fire started in a trash pile in the school basement and burned unnoticed for at least twenty minutes. When the heat broke a basement window, fresh air blasted the fire up a wooden stairwell as if in a chimney. The fire blew past the stairwell’s first floor fire doors, but rushed into the unprotected second floor hallway, spreading smoke and gases throughout the floor and trapping students and teachers in their classrooms.

More than 200 firefighters, from 22 engine companies, seven ladder companies, and ten squad companies, responded to the Our Lady of the Angels School fire. Firefighting efforts were delayed, however, when the Chicago Fire Department was first sent to the wrong address and then later had to use a ladder as a battering ram to break through a locked, eight-foot iron fence on the school’s property. These delays, combined with the “fire-friendly” atmosphere inside the school, severely limited their rescue options. The heat and smoke overwhelmed the firefighters when they attempted to use the stairs to reach the second floor, leaving the classroom windows as the only means of escape. In fact, one firefighter was on a ladder outside a window when he noticed that the white shirts on the students trapped inside were turning brown. In the few seconds before the room reached flashover, the firefighter saved the lives of ten students by dragging them through the window and dropping them 25 feet to the ground. While firefighters rescued many of the trapped students and teachers, the fire was too powerful for their efforts to be completely successful. In the end, of the estimated 340 students and teachers initially trapped on the second floor, 95 perished in the fire. Some of the victims were completely untouched by flames; the noxious gases had simply been too suffocating. Chicago Fire Commissioner Robert Quinn said of the fire, “It was the worst thing I have ever seen or ever will see.”

Investigations after the fire determined that the school’s fire protection system was inadequate. The school lacked fire sprinklers and detectors, the stairwells only had first-floor fire doors, and there was only one fire escape. Moreover, the school’s interior primarily contained highly combustible materials. As a result, many of the national fire codes governing schools were drastically overhauled. The National Fire Protection Association rewrote its provisions for schools, revising the exit standards and also requiring that schools be outfitted with sprinklers. Stricter codes were also enacted regarding the quality of building materials with concrete soon replacing wood and plaster in schools throughout the country. In fact, NFPA credits the lessons learned from the Our Lady of the Angels School Fire with saving the lives of countless children, noting that no school fire since 1958 has killed more than ten people.

Summary written by Adam Groves.

Resources at the IFSI Library

This DVD includes interviews with parents, children who survived, and men who fought or reported on the fire. It also looks at how it happened, how it might have been prevented, and what was done to make sure it would never happen again.

This is a worldwide look at the most disastrous fires throughout the centuries, starting with the Great Fire of Rome, July 18, 64 AD through the Bush Fires of Indonesia, 1997. The Our Lady of the Angels School fire is featured on pages 61 and 62.

This text provides fundamental information regarding the history and philosophy of fire prevention from an organization and operation perspective. Information about the Our Lady of the Angels fire is on pages 13-14.

This book examines the disastrous fire of December 1, 1958 of Our Lady of the Angels School and Church that took the lives of 92 children and 3 nuns. Written by a survivor, this book takes a look at the tragedy and its emotional aftermath.

This is volume fourof a four volume series of books chronicling the history of Chicago Fire Houses from 1958-2009. Photos of the Our Lady of Angels fire, as well as a list of the firefighters present, is located on pages 32-34.

Children, parents, firemen, reporters, clergy, nurses, policemen, school officials and others share their thoughts and feelings about their experience of the Our Lady of the Angels School fire in Chicago in December 1958.

Online Resources

This article, from the January 1959 issue of NFPA quarterly, discusses the fire in detail, including diagrams and a description of what happened in each classroom. It discusses the building's construction in detail as well and identifies several contributing factors. The article is scanned from the original; as of May 2014, some of the pages are out of order.

This site includes a description of the events of the fire as well as historical information about the school and biographical information about the victims and the first responders. There are opportunities for site visitors to share their memories of the fire and the victims.